The blistering tirade against idols (10:1–16) is directed against “Israel,” which as an umbrella term includes both Israel and Judah. Here Judah is particularly in view. Judah is warned about the astral deities commonly worshiped in Babylon. Some scholars claim an exilic setting for the poem and many deny its unity and that Jeremiah wrote it. The contrast between homemade idols and the living God has seldom been better drawn. With cutting sarcasm, the Lord describes the process of shaping, stabilizing, and clothing these gods. The contrast between the idol and God is heightened by alternating a mocking poem with a doxology: idols (3–5), God (6–7), idols (8–9), God (10), idols (11), God (12–13), idols (14–15), God (16).

The idols are nonfunctioning, a “work of errors” (NKJV). They are an …